


apples and gravity

by misura



Category: The Maze Runner Series - James Dashner
Genre: Canonical Character Death, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, Pre-Canon, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-16
Updated: 2013-12-16
Packaged: 2018-01-04 20:15:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 858
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1085241
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misura/pseuds/misura
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>This is how it ends:</i>
</p><p>
  <i>a red smear on a Griever and Thomas, looking.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	apples and gravity

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sunmachine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunmachine/gifts).



> you know, it might just be that I don't read enough YA, but as I started reading these books (about two months ago, so yay for Yuletide making me try new things?) I wasn't really expecting quite so many people to die - and die gruesomely, at that.
> 
> Alby, I liked. Newt ... argh. rip my heart out and do some dancing on the broken pieces?
> 
> so. I guess this fic is at least 60% catharsis and denial and stuff like that, which may also be why I wrote it all backwards, even if the beginning isn't exactly all unicorns and rainbows either and argh, I'll stop rambling now.

This is how it ends:

a red smear on a Griever and Thomas, looking.

Newt thinking: _Alby_ and moving, too little, too late.

_Alby._

 

_Newt._

Alby runs.

 _Only Runners go into the Maze,_ he's told every Greenbean there's ever been in the past year, just like he was told himself. _It's the Number One Rule._

Newt might be dead. Should be dead. _Deserves_ to be dead, maybe - no way out of here, after all, as far as anyone knows for sure.

("You think those shucks're playing it all fair?")

They all _hope_ , though. They all _work_ , and some of them go out there (out _here_ ). To _run_. To bring home the Maps that maybe, maybe will point them to an opening.

_You break that rule, you die._

_Please,_ Alby thinks.

 

No wind.

No rain.

 _No birds,_ New thinks, turning. Looking down. Estimating the distance from here to there.

(The air rushing by as he falls makes it almost feel like there's a breeze, but it's still quiet - _like a grave,_ Newt thinks, and then he hits the ground - there's pain and something in between a _snap!_ and a _crunch!_ and _he's not dead_ and he wants to - )

 

Alby remembers.

Finishing the list, folding the paper, thinking the word he hasn't written, the word nobody ever writes on the List, because the Creators ain't going to listen to it anyway.

_Please._

Thinking of all the things he wants, all the things he likely ain't never going to get, not down here, not with the Maze out there, unsolved, trapping them.

Thinking of Newt, feeling so much angrier than he thought he could still be, after two shuck years in this place.

 

Newt runs.

(Alby, half-smiling, saying: "Go and get yerself killed, why don't ya?", which is really just a roundabout way of saying he'll be worried. Which is really just a way of saying he's a shuck idiot.)

(Still, it's a joke. Alby doesn't make a lot of those. Doesn't smile very often, neither.)

(Oftener than he used to, though - or so people seem to be thinking, telling Newt, talking to him when Alby's not around, or when they'd rather not get their heads bitten off.)

(Alby's the leader, though. People should talk to him, bad mood or not.)

 

"You even look angry when you're sleeping."

Breakfast. Frypan's whipped up something deliciously hot with cinnamon and sugar, and Newt feels an almost-memory niggling at him like a loose tooth.

Alby glowers. Newt reflects only a shuck idiot would see that expression and want to get anywhere near. "Who ya trying to scare, flinthead?"

 

Newt works.

Nothing he does feels like he's done it before, and yet he seems to be picking it all up way too soon to be as new at all of this as that. He's got a quick head, sure, but not that quick.

In the morning, he sees the Runners leave, go out into the Maze. Tryin' to find a way out.

("It's a Maze," Alby says, looking like Newt's a shuck idiot for even asking.)

("So? You think those shanks're playing it all fair?" Newt doesn't know what the Creators are. Or who. Or what their shuck problem's. "You really think there's a way out?")

("I ain't got no other choice now, do I?" Alby snaps, and Newt feels like a bloody fool for not having figured out this bit, for not seeing what's got Alby so pissed off all the time.)

( _Scared,_ Newt thinks. _He's just scared silly, there ain't nothin' there._ )

( _Well, and angry, too. 'cos there might._ )

 

"Only the best of the best," Alby says, his tone informing Newt it's a question he's answered a hundred times before, which can't be quite true, considering there only seem to be fifty or so people living here.

"So that'll be me, then, some day," Newt says, because it's just him and Alby, and because it's true.

Alby looks angry. Newt's known the guy for nearly three days now, and he's yet to see Alby not angry.

"A confident shank, aren't ya?"

 _The Glade. The Doors. The Maze,_ Newt thinks. _Alby. Rob. Eric. Gally. Tanner._ He's got a good head for names, for remembering, seems like.

Newt shrugs.

 

 _My name is Newt,_ the boy thinks, and then there are voices, hands - _people_ , and he reaches for them.

 

This is how it begins:

Alby, writing the List, hating the feeling of _asking_ , of sending this piece of paper up there, listing all the stuff they need to survive down here.

Knowing they probably won't get all of it, that some stuff'll be missing. The Creators' way of telling them to figure it out for themselves, or do without. _Die. See if we care._

Everyone who comes here starts out wanting to leave, to get back. Alby's seen them, seen the way they gradually change, get to accepting that they're here and that they might as well make the best of it, and he makes sure that they do, all of them. He gets it.

Doesn't mean he has to like it.

Doesn't mean he has to feel anything but angry when the Box gets there.


End file.
